Telephone or audio conferencing allows three or more people to participate in a single telephone conversation. Each person is able to hear all the other callers when they speak and the conversation can progress as if all the callers were in the same room.
Audio telephone conferencing systems exist for connection to both the analogue and digital telecommunications networks. These systems use either analogue bridges or digital signal processing to combine the audio from three or more callers and play it to all participants in the conference.
With the advance of digital systems, more complex algorithms have been employed to improve the quality of the speech heard by each caller.
Existing conferencing systems have two basic market areas, business conferencing and social chatlines. Business conferencing can be provided as a public service by the network operator, or provided locally from a company's PABX. Chatlines are usually provided by independent service providers to callers who pay a premium rate for the call whilst accessing the service. The telephone numbers for chatlines are extensively advertised and there is no restriction on callers wishing to access the service, as long as the telephone being used has not been barred from initiating premium rate calls.
There are, at present, two main ways in which a telephone conference (teleconference) can be set up automatically. The first way is for all participants to dial in to a pre-arranged number at a pre-arranged time, on a so-called “meet me” basis. The second way is for one caller to dial into a system and then control the system so that it outdials to the other participants.
Business applications for “meet-me” teleconferencing systems can use an in-house system, a bureau or a network-based system. In each case, the business or group using a conference facility will generally have been allocated a telephone number and PIN. Telephone meetings can then be held on a scheduled or ad-hoc basis by all individuals with knowledge of the telephone number and PIN. The nature of the business user in terms of permanence and administrative simplicity make this approach practical and economic.
In contrast, a network operator wishing to provide “meet-me” telephone conferencing on an ad-hoc spontaneous basis to all subscribers would find the business model with its requirement for preregistration extremely difficult to manage effectively in the domestic arena.
Therefore the current situation is somewhat bizarre in that many public network operators (PNO's) provide on-demand meet-me conference facilities for strangers (i.e. chatline services) but do not provide such facilities for friends and families that may want to talk together.